Happy New Year everyone, the end of last year saw me knitting, weaving and sewing Christmas gifts for friends, which I can now share. A friend gifted me the Harry Potter Knitting Magic book by Tanis Gray the year before, so I thought it only fitting to try out some of the patterns this year.
I began with a Cornish pixie. Most patterns in this book are knitted in the round, and since this was something I did not have much experience of, I decided to give it a go. I plied wool from two cones in my stash together on my wheel and then chain plied the resulting yarn to make it slightly thicker. I followed the pattern apart from the wings which I decided to make myself as I didn’t like how they looked in the book.
I made the wings by printing a wing template from Google and bending some wire to its shape. I then traced the wire wings onto some scraps of cotton muslin and cut them out. Using a sewing machine (vintage hand crank) I stitched the veins onto the muslin and then stitched the muslin to the wire frames. This proved to be difficult on a sewing machine as the presser foot and feed dogs are in the way. After struggling for a while and catching my finger with the needle, I ended up purchasing a feed cover plate add on (Singer part number 32622) that covers the feed dogs so when you remove the presser foot you can freemotion.
After getting on well with the Cornish pixie I decided to have a go at knitting Hedwig. I had some white cotton in my stash so decided to use this. I didn’t have any speckled black for the wings, but as the figure shouldn’t need to be washed, I watered down some black all-purpose acrylic paint to create the speckles. Otherwise, Hedwig was knitted according to the pattern.
I enjoyed the challenge of kitting on DPN’s and was certainly much improved by the time I’d finished. The patterns also gave me an opportunity to learn some new techniques and I now have a much greater appreciation of how fiddly toys are to knit!
Happy Crafting!
Loose Ends 